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Study Finds Most Americans Get News from Social Media

May 31, 2016

A computer screen displays the social media posting by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook in Beijing, China, Friday, March 18, 2016. The photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging in downtown Beijing’s notorious smog has prompted a torrent of astonishment

A new study suggests a majority of U.S. citizens now get their news from social media websites.

The Pew Research Center is an organization that researches issues and trends affecting America and the world. It surveyed 4,654 people in January and February.

Pew researchers found 62 percent of the group got their news from social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.

The new study shows Facebook to be the most popular social media website for news. More registered users of Reddit get their news from Reddit than registered users of Facebook do from Facebook. But the Pew research shows that 44 percent of all U.S. adults get news from Facebook.

Only 2 percent of all U.S. adults get news from Reddit, the study suggests.

Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube also had high numbers of registered users getting news from these websites.

But the number of people using more than one web site to get news was fairly low. Just 26 percent said they use two sites to get news and only 10 percent said they use three or more.

A total of 64 percent of people said they only use one web site to get news. Most commonly that site is Facebook.

Researchers also found news on each of the five most popular social media websites appeals to different types of people. People looking for news on Instagram are most likely to be young. Female social media users are most likely to seek news on Facebook. More people with some type of college degree look for news on LinkedIn.

Information from a total of nine social media websites was part of the study. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat and Vine.

The number of visitors to all nine websites grew from a similar study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013.

Jeffrey Gottfried and Elisa Shearer wrote the report for Pew. They say people who use social media for news still use traditional media like television and newspapers.

Doug Bernard reported and wrote this story for VOA news. Pete Musto adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

Now it’s your turn. Where do you go to get most of your news? Which social media website is most appealing to you? Let us know in the comments section or on our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

social media – n. websites and applications that let users create and share content or to participate in social networking

survey(ed) – v. to ask many people a question or a series of questions in order to gather information about what most people do or think about something